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All Rise...

Judge Ike Oden is presented in Hypno-Vista.

The Charge

SEE the fantastic binocular muder! SEE the vat of death!

The Case

The Horrors of the Black Museum features a serial killer eluding
Scotland Yard at every turn, racking up mad kill points and grabbing headlines
throughout London. Renowned crime journalist Edward Bancroft (Michael Gough, Batman) mocks the incompetence of the
police in his lurid newspaper reports of the killings. Why? Well, Bancroft is
the culprit, of course; a doctor of death with a flair for the theatrical,
slaying victims by knife-blade binoculars, bed-mounted guillotines, and electric
acid baths. These eccentric weapons are a mere taste of his grandiose
"black museum" of murder, maintained by assistant Rick (Graham Curnow,
Three Men in a Boat), a white bread kid harboring dark secrets of his
own.

The Headless Ghost has three foreign exchange students—Ronnie
(David Rose, And Women Will Weep), Bill (Richard Lyon, The Great
Lover), and Ingrid (Lillian Sotane, The Camp On Blood
Island)—exploring the supposedly haunted Ambrose Castle. When Ronnie
convinces the gang to sneak in and stay in the castle overnight, they meet the
ghost of the Fourth Earl of Ambrose (Clive Revill, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes
Back), who convinces them to lift the curse of the castle and free the
spirits of his dead family members by retrieving the decapitated head of one of
his meanass ghost brothers. Wacky shenanigans involving a headless ghost
ensue.

Alright, VCI, get ready for a critical lashing: this Herman Cohen Classic
Horror Double Feature is just plain awful.

The DVD takes two films that couldn't possibly be farther apart in subject
matter and mashes them together, based only on the fact that Herman Cohen
produced them. Cohen, the man behind such B-movie classics as I Was A Teenage
Werewolf and How To Make A
Monster, binds these films by the thinnest of threads.

Black Museum plays as a sophisticated, high concept British psycho
thriller with Michael Gough charismatically chewing scenery as the film's mad
genius. There are exploitative elements to be found in quick flashes of gory
deaths and half-naked pin-ups, but Gough and the cast elevate the material to a
smart, genuinely suspenseful movie that would make a better double feature with
The Abominable Dr. Phibes or Saw (its over-stylized-death-trap child and
grandchild).

Headless Ghost is an entirely different beast, more of a 1950s
Ghostbreakers-type of comedy, with unfunny teen protagonists filling in
for Bob Hope. Everything about the movie is lame; the story is trite, the
characters are wooden, and the jokes lack any rhythm whatsoever. I recommend it
on the basis that some of the headless ghost effects are nifty, the castle
setting is atmospheric, and the cinematography is gorgeous. The British cast,
especially Clive Revill (the famous voice behind Star Wars' Emperor
Palpatine), give it a solid go, raising the film from horrible to bland
mediocrity.

The technical specs of this disc also disappoint. Horrors of the Black
Museum fares so-so, sporting a blurry, scratchy 2.35:1 anamorphic transfer
that is watchable at best. The Headless Ghost fares worse, with a
letterboxed transfer that looks like it was ported over from one of those public
domain VHS tapes you'd find in a Goodwill bargain bin; soft, fuzzy, and barely
tolerable.

The Dolby 2.0 stereo tracks accompanying each are about the same. Black
Museum is unspectacularly passable, while the Headless Ghost is thin
and tinny.

Abandon hope ye who expect extras. There aren't any, which is strange
because VCI's original Horrors of the Black Museum release came with
commentary tracks, introductions, and trailers. If I were you, I'd track down
that release and leave this DVD in the trash bin where it belongs.

The Verdict

Guilty.

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